Davis had sat down on the ground and was hurriedly pulling off his shoes. His beard fell down over his shirt and his hands were trembling.
"It won't do, John," spoke Steve Earle, and Tommy, aghast, saw the look on his father's face. "The limb he's on will never hold you. He might try to get farther out, and if he does——"
Then, as calmly as she could, Mrs. Davis called to the boy, pleading with him to come down, telling him that she would be his mother, not knowing, anxious, excited woman that she was, that the word probably meant nothing to that child tossing up there in mid-air.
And now for the first time Tommy's straining eyes saw—saw the white face, the little body pressed against the swaying limb, saw the frantic arms clinging to the lofty perch, saw the whole tree moving dizzily back and forth against the stormy sky, as if in the hands of a giant who was trying to shake that tiny figure down.
The voice of the boy rang out shrill and clear above the tumult of the wind and the tearing leaves.
"Joe! You hear me, Joe, don't you?" The voice was quiet and sure now, the nerves of the man that was to be had steadied. Only grammar went all to pieces; it had been deteriorating these last twenty-four hours. A boy's grammar is a structure always ready to tumble, like a house of cards.
"They ain't no cop down here, Joe. We done sent him home. He's gone, Joe, honest he has. You know me, Joe. I wouldn't tell you no lie!"
Now the figure up there stirred. A small bare foot felt down and reached uncertainly, as if blown about by the wind, for a lower branch; a small hand that had clung to a glass of milk now clung to a limb above his head. Then Tommy saw that his father, with upraised face, was standing directly under that figure up there in the angry foliage.
"Steady, Joe, old scout!" said Earle.